


A Team That Trusts

by anissa_qiaolian



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Character Study, F/M, Jeffrey Mace centric, Relationship Study, but at least he feels bad about it (in this fic), but only bc he sees something btwn may and mace and he doesnt like it, except for when he shoved may into that wall and had her put in a straightjacket, he was just doing his mf job, mace deserved better, phil looks like kind of an asshole, sorry but the team was so mean in 4A, that was pretty foul, they all should have been nicer to mace he was a really nice guy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-26
Updated: 2020-01-26
Packaged: 2021-02-27 08:01:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,337
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22423738
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anissa_qiaolian/pseuds/anissa_qiaolian
Relationships: Jeffrey Mace & Agents of SHIELD Team, Jeffrey Mace/Melinda May, background philinda sexual tension
Comments: 11
Kudos: 16





	A Team That Trusts

The first time he meets Agent May, she gives him a dirty look and says something snide under her breath. When he looks up at her face, for evidence of the insubordination he was pretty sure would be there, he found only a blank canvas staring at him instead.

Well two could play at that game.

He dismisses her. When she is almost out the door he replies, without glancing in her direction: “And please try to keep your comments to yourself, Agent May. I know you and Agent Coulson are close, but he is no longer the man in this office. I am. And I trust that an agent with your experience would respect that.”

He looks up to catch the briefest flash of shame in her eyes before she astutely nods once.

“Apologies sir.”

She doesn’t say anything else. She closes the door respectfully and leaves. Another agent would have spent the next ten minutes kissing his ass, or playing dumb by saying that they hadn’t meant to disrespect him, when clearly they had.

Not Melinda May.

She doesn’t respect him, that much is obvious.

But after that moment she never rubs his face in it.

The scathing looks don’t stop, but Jeffrey has a feeling that that’s just the way she feels about the new SHIELD ordering anyway.

Coulson wasn’t the only one who was demoted by the government.

Jeffrey knew was well as she did that her little tactical team was just a consolation prize from the government, just as Coulson and Mack being partnered to find Quake (against his orders, mind you) was to keep the ragtag team from tearing his doors for splitting up their family.

He lifted SHIELD’s rules on fraternization just so Fitzsimmons could bunk together. But did he get a thank you? No.

Just dirty looks, hushed whispers when they think his back is turned and general disobedience. They were not a team that trusts.

Oh they trusted each other, mind you, just not him.

Starting with Melinda May.

Coulson is sitting next to her this time, and he’s just given the man orders he’s sure he’ll defy by nightfall, when he calls for Melinda May to be dismissed from the room. She shares a long stoic look with Coulson and nods once in Jeffrey’s direction before closing the door. He can’t help but smile and chuckle after she exits.

“Melinda May”, he laughs, hopefully not nervously. “Now that’s a riddle I’d like to solve.”

He expects Coulson to smile and nod along, as everyone else does, but when he looks up the man’s eyes are somber and unreadable. “Good luck with that.”

He doesn’t try to make a joke again. They discuss. Phil obeys. Phil disobeys. He chews them out. It goes in Phil Coulson’s left ear and leaves through Melinda May’s right.

May is hit with the Ghost Virus.

May is hitting everyone on base. Burrows whispers in his ear that it’s a PR disaster in the making.

The Cavalry, on a rampage, while US senators are touring the base. He scoffs.

“Burrows, please. Agent May is sick right now. We need to help her get better, not contain the threat.”

“We can do both sir.”

He sighs. “Get the briefcase. And have an extraction team ready.”

She’s in a virus-produced manic rage when he finds her. Her tactical team is sprawled out around her, unconscious, as Phil Coulson tries to calm his sick friend down the way you would try to talk a wild animal out of eating your flesh.

He looks into her eyes and watches emotions cloud them over as he approaches, souped up on super-serum.

Anger.

Behind the anger, fear.

Behind the fear, confusion.

Behind the confusion, betrayal.

Behind the betrayal, sadness.

Behind the sadness, resignation.

That’s the last flash of emotion he sees before he decides he can’t take it anymore.

He closes his eyes and slams her headfirst into the brick wall.

He orders her to be strapped in a straightjacket, conscious and in a state of hysterical panic, before locking his office door and burying his head in his hands. When Phil Coulson comes barging into his office demanding an explanation, Jeffrey smiles and feeds him the company lines.

Melinda May is back in commission three days later and the thunderous looks she normally casts in his direction are replaced with wariness. She doesn’t say anything outright – of course she doesn’t, it wouldn’t be her way, Jeffrey realizes. But she makes it a point to stay away from him in the hallways, and when she does see him alone, puts a wide berth of space between them. Only visits him in the presence of Coulson, who seems to move in front of her subconsciously, which she allows him to do, consciously.

It makes him feel positively like shit.

Weeks go by and he’s accosted by Leo Fitz in a hallway, sneered at by Jemma Simmons, and distrusted by Daisy Johnson.

Coulson keeps crossing the line in the sand and has the gall to act offended when Jeffrey shoves it back in place.

Melinda May continues to avoid him.

That’s the thing that hurts the worst, because for once, it’s entirely his fault.

The Patriot sees the destruction Hydra reeks upon the city.

He sees the bodies, the distrust between neighbors, the fear of parents, and the inability to distinguish friend from foe, ally from enemy, even from within his own ranks.

But there was something about Melinda May…

Hydra Agent Melinda May. And not just any Hydra agent: A Level 7 Hydra law enforcer, the muscle, torturer, interrogator. She was stone cold murderer who caused all of this mess in the first place. Because she, ironically, had been unable to carry out her orders to murder a powered young child.

That child that grew into an incredibly unstable Inhuman who murdered thousands of people at Cambridge University, including her husband, a psych professor at that very same school.

Her failure was what caused all of their suffering, which she has increased tenfold by dutifully carrying out Hydra’s agenda to wipe out Inhumans in the years since the Incident.

He should hate her.

He _did_ hate her. When the idea of her was just that, an abstract face of evil, wearing the green insignia of inhumanity trying to wipe out anyone suspected of having powers and striking fear into those who might otherwise rise against them.

But even as she faces him – _him,_ The Patriot, a man with super strength who happens to be twice her tiny size, he can see the conflict flash across her face.

Once, during their fight, she stares into his Shield insignia with a bewildered look on her face before remembering who she is and throwing him into a wall.

In that second it was almost like she had forgotten what side she was on, before she remembered she was one of the bad guys. She remembered right after that though, yanking her boot off his neck and pressing a hand to her earpiece, ordering a safehouse full of children to be bombed in retribution for Shield’s break in to their facilities.

But she said she didn’t know they were children.

And he shouldn’t have believed her but the look on her face…

The look on her face when he dives under the rubble to save them is strange. It’s subdued and more regretful than he’s ever seen it, somehow even more regretful than the look in her eyes when she realized she’d condemned children to die.

It’s final and respectful, like she knows something about his life that he doesn’t, and he knows right then that he will never see her face again. She gives him a last respectful nod, and runs off to join the rest of his team on the side where he somehow is sure she belongs.

Shield.

The side of heroes.

Melinda May, The Cavalry, the Hero.

 _Yeah,_ Jeffrey thinks, right up until he can’t anymore.

_That sounds about right._


End file.
